BC Bantam Rankings

Scroll down to see Hockey Hub rankings for Bantam teams in both the Canadian Sports School Hockey Leagues (Prep and Varsity) as well as for bantam teams competing in BC’s largest minor hockey league – the Pacific Coast Amateur Hockey Association.

One notable change in BC bantam hockey this year, is that Burnaby Winter Club’s top bantam squad is now playing in the Canadian Sports School Hockey League for the first time, following a trend that has been developing in top tier bantam hockey in BC since 2014.

Other Lower Mainland bantam Hockey Academy teams now playing in the CSSHL bantam league include Yale HA (Abbotsford area) and two teams from Delta HA (Green and White).

Delta was the first Lower Mainland Hockey Academy to join the league, in 2014-2015, the first year the bantam division was added to the league – with a total of four teams competing in the Prep division and four in the Varsity division. Delta iced both a Prep (A1) and Varsity team in the first year.

Previously only midget teams (E15, Prep and Varsity) had played in the league.

Yale joined the bantam division in 2015-2016 with a Prep team, along with Vancouver Island based Shawnigan Lake, to form a six team Prep division.

In 2016-2017 the league expanded to nine Prep teams and six Varsity teams.

Delta has added a second Prep team this season, in the latest round of expansion.

The CSSHL Bantam Prep division now includes 13 teams – four from the Lower Mainland, two from the Island (Shawnigan and Pacific Coast), two from the Interior (PoE and OHA), three from Alberta (Edge, OHA Edmonton and Northern Alberta), plus teams from Saskatchewan (Notre Dame) and Manitoba (Rink).

The Varsity division includes another eight teams.

The rise of the Hockey Academies has radically changed the complexion of bantam hockey not only in the Lower Mainland, but across British Columbia and Western Canada; as evidenced by last year’s WHL bantam draft, where nearly all of the top draft picks were selected from CSSHL academy teams.

Hockey Hub has elected to publish rankings of both the CSSHL Bantam and PCAHA Hockey Leagues separately.

In both instances, Hockey Hub rankings are based on winning percentages rather than league point totals, with goal for and against differential as the tie-breaker.

This season, Hockey Hub will attempt to follow the other recent big change in bantam hockey at the provincial level – BC Zone teams, which launched last year as a pilot program of the Okanagan Mainline association with four teams drawn from area zones- North Okanagan (Salmon Arm/Vernon), Central Okanagan (Kelowna), South Okanagan (Penticton/West Kelowna) and Thompson (Kamloops).

This season East Kootenay (Kimberly), and Yukon (Whitehorse) are joining the four Okanagan zone teams.